Before there was time to attack Harrisonville, however, a scout reported Peabody again on the war path, this time bent on an utter extermination of the Guerrillas, and he well-nigh kept his word. From Job Crabtree’s, Quantrell had moved to an unoccupied house known as the Low house, and then from this house he had gone to some contiguous timber to bivouac for the night. About ten o’clock the sky suddenly became overcast, a fresh wind blew from the east, and rain fell in torrents. Again the house was occupied, the horses being hitched along the fence in the rear of it, the door on the south, the only door, having a bar across it in lieu of a sentinel. Such soldiering was perfectly inexcusable, and it taught Quantrell a lesson to remember until the day of his death.
In the morning preceding the day of the attack Lieutenant Nash, of Peabody’s regiment, commanding two hundred men, had struck Quantrell’s trail, but lost it later on, and then found it again just about sunset. He was informed of Quantrell’s having gone from the Low house to the brush and of his having come back to it when the rain began falling heavily. To a certain extent this seeking shelter was a necessity on the part of Quantrell. The men had no cartridge boxes, and not all of them had overcoats. If once their ammunition were damaged, it would be as though sheep should attack wolves.
Nash, supplied with everything needed for the weather, waited patiently for the Guerrillas to become snugly settled under shelter, and then surrounded the house. Before a gun was fired the Federals had every horse belonging to the Guerrillas, and were bringing to bear every available carbine in command upon the only door. At first all was confusion. Across the logs that once had supported an upper floor some boards had been laid, and sleeping upon them were Todd, Blunt and William Carr. Favored by the almost impenetrable darkness, Quantrell determined upon an immediate abandonment of the house. He called loudly twice for all to follow him and dashed through the door under a galling fire. Those in the loft did not hear him, and maintained in reply to the Federal volleys a lively fusillade. Then Cole Younger, James Little, Joseph Gilchrist and a young Irish boy—a brave new recruit—turned back to help their comrades. The house became a furnace. At each of the two corners on the south side four men fought, Younger calling on Todd in the intervals of every volley to come out of the loft and come to the brush. They started at last. It was four hundred yards to the nearest shelter, and the ground was very muddy. Gilchrist was shot down, the Irish boy was killed, Blunt was wounded and captured, Carr surrendered, Younger had his hat shot away, Little was unhurt, and Todd, scratched in four places, finally got safely to the timber. But it was a miracle. Twenty Federals singled him out as well as they could in the darkness and kept close at his heels, firing whenever a gun was loaded. Todd had a musket which, when it seemed as if they were all upon him at once, he would point at the nearest and make pretense of shooting. When they halted and dodged about to get out of range, he would dash away again, gaining what space he could until he had to turn and re-enact the same unpleasant pantomime. Reaching the woods at last, he fired point blank, and in reality now, killing with a single discharge one pursuer and wounding four. Part of Nash’s command were still on the track of Quantrell, but after losing five killed and a number wounded, they returned again to the house, but returned too late for the continued battle. The dead and two prisoners were all that were left for them.
Little Blue was bank full and the country was swarming with militia. For the third time Quantrell was afoot with unrelenting pursuers upon his trail in every direction. At daylight Nash would be after him again, river or no river. He must get over or fare worse. The rain was still pouring down; muddy, forlorn, well-nigh worn out, yet in no manner demoralized, just as Quantrell reached the Little Blue he saw on the other bank Toler, one of his own soldiers, sitting in a canoe. Thence forward the work of crossing was easy, and Nash, coming on an hour afterwards, received a volley at the ford where he expected to find a lot of helpless and unresisting men.
This fight at the Low house occurred the first week in May, 1862, and caused the expedition against Harrisonville to be abandoned. Three times surprised and three times losing all horses, saddles, and bridles, it again became necessary to disband the Guerrillas in this instance as in the preceding two. The men were dismissed for thirty days with orders to remount themselves, while Quantrell—taking Todd into his confidence and acquainting him fully with his plans—started in his company for Hannibal. It had become urgently necessary to replenish the supply of revolver caps. The usual trade with Kansas City was cut off. Of late the captures had not been as plentiful as formerly. Recruits were coming in, and the season for larger operations was at hand. In exploits where peril and excitement were about evenly divided, Quantrell took great delight. He was so cool, so calm; he had played before such a deadly game; he knew so well how to smile when a smile would win, and when to frown when a frown was a better card to play, that something in this expedition appealed to every quixotic instinct of his intrepidity. Todd was all iron; Quantrell all glue. Todd would go at a circular saw; Quantrell would sharpen its teeth and grease it where there was friction. One purred and killed, and the other roared and killed. What mattered the mode, however, only so the end was the same?
Quantrell and Todd Go After Ammunition
Clad in the full uniform of Federal majors—a supply of which Quantrell kept always on hand, even in a day so early in the war as this—Quantrell and Todd rode into Hamilton, a little town on the Hannibal & St. Louis Railroad, and remained for the night at the principal hotel. A Federal garrison was there—two companies of Iowa infantry—and the captain commanding took a great fancy to Todd, insisting that he should leave the hotel for his quarters and share his blankets with him.
Two days were spent in Hannibal, where an entire Feneral regiment was stationed. Here Quantrell was more circumspect. When asked to give an account of himself and his companion, he replied promptly that Todd was a major of the Sixth Missouri Cavalry and himself the major of the Ninth. Unacquainted with either organization, the commander at Hannibal had no reason to believe otherwise. Then he asked about that special cut-throat Quantrell. Was it true that he fought under a black flag? Had he ever really belonged to the Jayhawkers? How much truth was there in the stories of the newspapers about his operations and prowess? Quantrell became voluble. In rapid yet picturesque language he painted a perfect picture of the war along the border. He told of Todd, Jarrette, Blunt, Younger, Haller, Poole, Shepherd, Gregg, Little, the Cogers, and all of his best men just as they were, and himself also just as he was, and closed the conversation emphatically by remarking: “If you were here, Colonel, surrounded as you are by a thousand soldiers, and they wanted you, they would come and get you.”
From Hannibal—after buying quietly and at various times and in various places fifty thousand revolver caps—Quantrell and Todd went boldly into St. Joseph. This city was full of soldiers. Colonel Harrison B. Branch was there in command of a regiment of militia—a brave, conservative, right-thinking soldier—and Quantrell introduced himself to Branch as Major Henderson of the Sixth Missouri. Todd, by this time, had put on, in lieu of a major’s epaulettes, with its distinguishing leaf, the barred ones of a captain. “Too many majors traveling together,” quaintly remarked Todd, “are like too many roses in a boquet: the other flowers don’t have a chance. Let me be a captain for the balance of the trip.”